Moodling Beyond Moodle

February 27, 2013

Moodle for Teachers Electronic Village Online took place on WizIQ and on a Moodle website called Integrating Technology for Active Lifelong Learning (IT4ALL) from January to February 2013. M4TEVO2013 free 5-week online workshop took place for the second time as part of EVO and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Participants of the course learned about and practiced Moodle skills. In addition, participants of the course enrolled in M4TEVO2013 course area on WizIQ education online so they could access the content, engage in discussions, and view live online classes and the recordings when the course ended on the Moodle.

The aim of the M4T workshop was to provide participants, who have never used Moodle or who would like to enrich their previous Moodle experiences with Moodle 2.4 with the knowledge and skills to navigate a Moodle course, access resources, activities, and blocks from a student perspective and practice the same Moodle features in the course practice area.

Asynchronous & Synchronous Classes
Moodle for Teacher for Electronic Village Online (M4TEVO2013) included both asynchronous (not dependent on time) and synchronous (time dependent). The asynchronous part took place on a Moodle webstie and the synchronous mode took place on WiziQ live online class every Saturday at 10 AM. There were 6 live online sessions.

Course in and out of Moodle
The participants of M4TEVO2013 worked in 4 learning environments:

Moodle course area where the participants learned about the features available on Moodle such as resources (content), activities (tasks), and blocks (plugins)

Moodle course practice area where the participants were able to try out what they had learned in the course area and create a mini-lesson as teachers

WizIQ course area where participants were able to access the courseware that included Powerpoint presentation, pdf files, text files, audio files, video files, Youtube videos (embedded), join live online class and watch the recordings of the live online synchronous classes

WizIQ live synchronous classes where participants were able to learn and connect with the teacher, the facilitators and each other in real time

There are advantages to having a course management system (CMS) beyond Moodle. Moodle courses close once the course ends, but a course on WizIQ never ends. Participants can continue learning by reviewing the content and interacting with each other and the facilitators in the course feed (discussion forums).

Final Live Online Session on WizIQ

TESOL Convention Live Streaming
Learning online never stops. M4TEVO2013 began on the Moodle, continued in a course on WizIQ, and will be shared at the TESOL international convention in Dallas in March, 2013. Participants are invited to join live face-to-face and online session. Participants, who cannot attend the TESOL convention in Dallas will be able to join the M4TEVO2013 class on WizIQ. EVO is part of the computer-assisted language learning (CALL) interest section (IS) for TESOL.

Dr. Nellie Deutsch is an education technology and curriculum consultant, faculty at Atlantic University in the MA transpersonal and leadership studies, teacher trainer, researcher, and writer. She organizes Moodle MOOCs and online conferences. She earned her doctorate in education and educational leadership with a specialization in curriculum and instruction from the University of Phoenix Her dissertation research (available on ProQuest & Amazon) focused on instructor experiences with integrating technology in blended learning contexts in higher education around the world.
Nellie offers free teacher training courses on teaching with technology, action research and Moodle for teacher courses to new, veteran, and future teachers who wish to teach online, face-to-face or in blended learning formats. She also provides online courses to teachers and ICT people on how to be administrators of Moodle websites. She integrates Moodle and WizIQ live virtual classes in all her courses.

Comments

Moodle4Teachers provided me the best experience as a teacher and a student. the course was so well organised and planned by the instructors that none of the participants faced the problem. there is too much to learn and i suggest to all who want to learn join this course.

Moodle4Teachers provided me the best experience as a teacher and a student. the course was so well organised and planned by the instructors that none of the participants faced the problem. there is too much to learn and i suggest to all who want to learn join this course.